London’s latest take on the classic Billy Shakes stars a magnetic Cush Jumbo, the first woman I’ve seen in the role and possibly the most natural fit for it. She has stage presence coming out her invisible pores, babies. Hamlet, which I learned at Quizzo a few weeks ago is Shakespeare’s longest play, is about the grumpiest grumpo who ever grumped (well for dern good reason), but Cush gave us the opposite of cushlash and made this super-emo character captivating for the first time in a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This Hamlet is a cool fella in luxurious leisurewear neutrals who is seething with rage at his new uncle-daddy and his uncle-daddy’s new sister-wife who is also our dude’s mommy-aunt. Turns out uncle-daddy killed daddy-brother so he could become king and marry his brother’s widow slash his sister-in-law. It’s a big old mess! Hamlet’s like ‘does no one else realize what has happened? are you all just cool with this? you guys are seeing this right?’ and just kind of goes whaaaat the fuuuuuck until he starts murdering out his revenge. He thought he got his piece of shit uncle first but turns out he actually killed that Polonius guy\u00ae and from then on things did not get better for him or anyone else. Polonius, fun fact, was played by Joseph Marcell, Geoffrey the butler from Fresh Prince, and I was very excited to see him and shouted exuberantly so it’s a good thing I was watching from home (see below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this version’s attempt at modernizing the tale, the clothes were modern streetwear and they used a lot of guns. I wish people would just do it straight. Sometimes it’s silly. I did absolutely adore the hilarious use of “It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right”; that was the funniest theatrical bit I’ve seen in weeks. But to balance it out, the modern techno music used for scene changes, and the weird music interlude with Ophelia dancing around, were big misfires. The staging and set were very stark and bare, which worked for me. I thought the casting was fairly strong all around. Ophelias usually fail to make an impression on me (or anyone?), but I enjoyed Norah Lopez Holden’s take that really showed the nuanced details of a yoot’s life. Ophelia’s primal screaming was so good I wish I could record that and play it on a loop in my neighbor’s window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The play is all about its enthralling lead though, who put aside the usual intrigue about the title character’s mental health and made it clear that their thirst for vengeance was the only option. Some of Cush’s delivery was surprisingly musical, really leaning into the rhythmic possibilities and making the words fun to listen. I was reminded a few times of Daryl Mitchell doing Sonnet 141 in 10 Things I Hate About You. For some of her lines I was jiving in my head to his unparalleled take on “In faith I do not love thee WITH MINE EEEEEYES\/for they in thee a thousand errors NOTE.” Hot take but that’s the best part of that excellent movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently read Maggie O’Farrell’s book Hamnet<\/span> (decent but not as good as I was hyped to believe)(much better than her Instructions for a Heatwave<\/span> though, woof) so I was eager to reexperience Hamlet and try to discern where the grief he was feeling for his son may have come into play. I’m not sure of specifics, but it definitely felt sadder. Whether that’s the book or the enchantment of Cush’s performance, who can say!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In positively thrilling news, the Young Vic has committed to making all of this season’s productions available to watch via livestream for those of us who don’t completely love being coughed on by maskless miscreants. They had four livestream performances through their ‘Best Seat in Your House’ program. I love that they offer several different camera angles to choose from, but the pre-show videos for testing out the different sight lines for each choice all looked the same so we went with Director’s Choice (which is probably the right move regardless?). Since it was streamed during a regular in-person performance, the cameras didn’t get all up in their grills like with the Almeida’s Macbeth but it came across well on the small screen nonetheless. (They also had six performances that were socially distanced instead of being sold at full capacity. A super bravo to little Victor!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Apparently time got away from me because this ends tomorrow! Go see it if you are in London!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The show began at 7pm, Act I ended at 8:50pm (thank god I was home that’s too long without a bathroom break), and the show ended at 10:10. The website says the run time is 3 hours 10 minutes, so that’s some muhfuhing commitment to accuracy and I APPRECIATE IT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" London’s latest take on the classic Billy Shakes stars a magnetic Cush Jumbo, the first woman I’ve seen in the role and possibly the most natural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-theatre"],"yoast_head":"\n